This 6-part adaptation of Jane Harper’s Australian bestselling crime novel is an intense and grown-up murder mystery. While it is ostensibly a whodunnit, its real focus is the fracturing of individuals and families after grief, guilt and resentment takes its toll.
This is part of its problem, as those looking for a straightforward twist and turn drama may be distracted and dare-I-say-it, bored by the deep themes and emotional revelations that were obstacles to the narrative thrust of the story.
By episode two I felt my mind wandering, it just dragged on too much and its relentless slowness started to grate.
For me it wasn’t one of those shows that grabbed my attention from the first minute and I even put it on at the background a couple of times while writing articles and could keep up easily with the story.
The action starts in 2009 with a teenage Kieran Elliot about to drown in storm lashed caves. A boat arrives carrying Finn Elliot (Remy Kidd) Kieran’s brother and Toby Gilroy (Talon Hooper), but rather than rescuing Kieran their boat overturns and they are killed.
Kieran (Charlie Vickers) survives and its clear he will have to live with the guilt and stigma involved all alone.
15 years later Kieran Elliot (Charlie Vickers) who has exiled himself, returns with his partner Mia (Yerin Ha) to his childhood seaside home. Kieran’s dad is suffering from dementia, and it is also the anniversary of Finn and Toby’s deaths.
Kieran is greeted by his old friends Ash Carter, Toby’s brother Sean and Keiran’s ex-girlfriend Olivia. Whilst Kieran is on the beach meets Bronte who is working on the possibility that another person had died in the caves on that fateful day, 15 years ago.
Bronte’s body is then found on a beach near Olivia’s house where Kieran happens to be going for a run.
Who killed Bronte, is it linked to the boating tragedy 15 years earlier and how many people were in those caves that night?
This is a great premise, but it takes so long to get to each of the revelations that you want to fast forward it.
I thought that Charlie Vickers was superb as Kieran, a man consumed with guilt and regret because he was the reason his brother and his friend died that night. He is a great actor. The suspicion and resentment towards him from the village and his family felt overly dramatic. Yes, they drowned trying to save him, but surely events like these are risks that villages have close to the ocean.
There were so many scenes reflecting this guilt, rage and regret from everyone that it grew tiresome, and you found yourself wanting whole scenes to disappear so that you could concentrate on who killed Bronte.
4 episodes would have been plenty.
The script isn’t gripping enough, not original and is a little predictable and I am sad to say I just couldn’t get into it.
Another complaint is there are too many characters that are forgettable and add nothing to the story. Each episode introduces more of them which seems like a device to keep us guessing. I like a red herring as much as the next person, but this was ridiculous.
SURVIVORS seemed torn between an examination of the impacts and consequences on individuals and communities of a tragedy and a classic murder mystery. By trying to satisfy both, the fail to realise fully either of them.